For companies that sell fundamentally halal products like shell, Pepsi, etc,…. These companies are highly leveraged, for instance d/E ratio for fmcg companies is 4. Isn’t the same hadith of the prophet “the receiver, payer, witness” fall under employees who work in these companies across different functions? For instance the salesman, marketing, operations, like the salesman in Pepsi, cannot sell that much quantity of Pepsi at that price point, which allows to sell to customers with net 60 payments terms, and all of that is happening because of the huge debt that the company has. The point being all employees in Pepsi are witnesses, of the debt the company has. And what about the cfo of the company who knows, sees and sign everything related to interest payments.

The same point (referenced in other career FAQs) about creating intolerable difficulty for ourselves applies. If you adopt this approach you will restrict the job pool for Muslims to a much much smaller pool and most public sector employers will also be ruled out. Pepsi is fundamentally a halal business. Yes if it leverages that is not permissible, but you as an employee are not directly linked to that. Pepsi could of course have taken out a halal loan – so they could well have sold the same amount of coke in a halal context too. Now I personally would not want to work as a CFO or finance department employee for such a company however, as that would likely bring in play the prohibition on witnessing and entering into interest-based transactions.

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